Potato Project

Characteristics of Potato:
Inside: wet, slimy, bumpy, edge is harder, nicer movement, dryer
- transform potato and surface of piece of paper
- look at relationship between the thickness of the piece of paper and pain on potato
Now...
1. Cover surface of potato with paint (chose green)

2. Print surface of paper with potato
3. Overprint with different color with same potato (chose blue)

4. Again overprint either in between or overlap (chose yellow)
5. Keep printing

- didn't come out as a whole potato print because of inconsistent ridges in the sweet potato

Why this way?
- starting with one color, you have an understanding of the pattern of potato
- explore overlapping, you get understanding of nuances and amount of paint affecting texture on piece of paper
- relationship between thickness of paint and potato
- this method slows students down
- slowing down is a by product and incentive of the project

Texture and Surface
Now invent ways of using potato in a transforming surface:
1. work with issue of density. How can you explore this?
2. work with issue of balance and the amount of paper you do and don't cover.
3. work with different exercises in transforming paper with potato

What did we learn? Keep control of where we want to go?
- Aesthetic control: how much paint and how much space on paper we would liek to use
- Challenges: play with the paper, experiment and play by making things interesting
What comes out of it?
- For children, we are talking more about content
- Balance and Density are artistic concepts learned as a set of conventions which can be explored in many ways.
- You can take a simple object and play with it to create boundless art
- What kind of patterns can be created?
- Choose which one to cut up and which one to keep
- As teachers, we need to let our students go

Other alternatives to potato: You can use the end of the carrot,cut more pieces of potato- anything that has texture

Drawing for Movement

So far, we have been experimenting with materials and now that we are drawing, these seems to be confusion about our new project: in and on the paper
- there may be confusion because of the constancy in trying to get rid of conventions and going back to just drawing.
- by feeling and sitting the paper, a feeling of being in the paper is experienced. (embodied knowing)
- if you're going to draw something, use your senses in order to have discussion about it.- "a feel for something."
- a movement comes in, through, out the body and into the drama. (moves and gathers something out from itself.)

How do you keep your drawing alive?
- focus on the line. What does it tell you? Des it tell you to stop or go on? There's a subtlety to it.
- on vs. in the paper...

Now...
Create a drawing. At the end, it should have a feel of the object that you started with. How do you preserve the quality of the drawing without presenting the drawing.
Lines: In and Out of surface, own integrity and preservation that doesn't have to refer itself ouside directly but has a feel of where it began.
- Take drawing back into the body from object itself. (Dancers do this very well..where motions of dropping into the paper is manifested.)
- Ask yourself: What kind of drawings do they need to be?
- Give a new birth to them. What needs to happen to these lines?
- What kind of movement does it make?

Some images made by classmates:








My piece:

What happens when you transform a milk carton?

Starting point: Milk carton, paper mache materials from previous week....



There are associations placed upon our work. The visuals put our mind to questions, asking us, "What do you think is going on here?" Let the material impose on you and talk to it without having your own agenda without impositions of your own ideas on the material. The goal should be to speak what it is that you want it to say. If you have a repertiore, then call upon it in a certain way. If we simply just look, we won't know what we're looking for so we need to have conversations with materials and its process because it gives us clearer explanations to our ideas. Sometimes, the classrooms may be the only place where students can carry such conversations and related issues. With the materials, we make meanings while having fun with it! Here are some works by classmates:



Next project: Draw a coexistent environment of the made object on and in the piece of paper. Afterward, tear it up into 3s-4s and combine it anyway you desire.

Paper Mache

- Can be used for masks
- Kiki Smith
- Oldenberg uses material of all kinds in order to create art.
- "Heritage School" was a place where art was really part of the curriculum. Kids decided to speak out in their art by constructing life size pieces, grown ups, which evoked the theme: "See no eveil, hear no evil, speak no evil." This was a response to a Muslim adolescent girl placed in an incarceration center because accused of suicide bombing.
- This empowered students to use skills to speak out against what was going on.
- Teachers need to help students feel comfortable with what they have.

Process of Transformation:
- transforming materials and transforming transformed materials.

Today's Project:
Milk Carton: objective is to transform it with paper mache, and create something that has magical powers. Then write a narrative about the magical powers it has, the emergence of this object.


Carton Qualities:
- waxy, stiff, plops, balances, spinnable, makes noises when you squeeze into it, cuttable.

Things I added: wire hanger, mini tree stump

Magical Powers it has: flies and saves little animals from the wild prey
- I may have gotten the idea while watching Planet Earth and saw episodes of little baby animals getting killed by its prey.
- Reminded me of an owl.
- The inside wooden stump is a place for little animals to sit on.

What I did:
- broke the carton apart and made an enclosure of some kind
- playing around with materials, I broke the top off and cut the side flaps and made it into wing-like shapes
- covered the box with paper mache as well as the inside
- more and more started to look like an owl
- the flat part of the box needed another dimension to it so I decided to attach a wire hanger to help it move around

Continuation of Last Post and Paper Mache

Some projects created by classmates

There is an embodiment of tearing and playing of materials. There's a play with materials that establishes a dialogue between them. We need to make decisions and piece out of that dialogue to see what kind of conversations we can come up with. A piece begins to take shape, thus creating form. Sometimes we make aesthetic decisions that causes inclusion and exclusions of our work. There's a process of initiation to what begins to emerge whre a journey begins to form through our art.

Paper Mache



Materials used:
Wheat paste, brush, spoons, sponge, water, tray

Ways to start our own class:
- Ask in our classroom, what we have in our trays.
- Look at the paste powder and examine qualities. (Smooth, grainy...)
- What will happen if we take some of our flour material and mix it with water?
- Let's all try together.
- How many spoons of water do we need to change the flour? What happens when we do?
- How about another spoonful? What happens?
- Lets keep adding to make it a creamy texture. How many spoons of water do we need to make that consistency? (1 scoop of flour to 6 scoops of water.)

If children do it themselves, they know the process and can understand what actually happens to the qualities of materials. It helps them connect their experience to the project. It also helps them think through the process.

Project:
Take pages of telephone directory and cover paper with wheat paste, all the way to the edge. See how you can change the paper.